Performance question.

Hi,
        I have a dual PIII, 600 MHZ server with 768 Meg of RAM.  I have the
construct catalog set up, using interchange 4.6.5, mysql 3.23.36, perl
5.6.0.  Linux Mandrake 8.0, mysql back end.

When I run

/usr/sbin/ab -c 3 -n 100
'http://<my_site>/cgi-bin/construct/scan/fi=products/st=db/co=yes/sf=categor
y/se=Hammers/va=link_image%3d/va=link_banner%3dHand%20Planes.html'


On 'low' performance setting, I get 1.69 requests/second.
On 'high' performance setting, I get 1.3 requests/second.

Doing the benchmark completely maxes out both processors to 100% during the
length of the test.  My question is this:  Is that normal?  It seems
incredibly slow for what I consider to be a pretty fast machine.


Thanks,
        -Caleb